Divided Brazil barrels towards uncertain presidential run-off

A deeply polarised Brazil stood at a political crossroads Monday as the bruising first round of the presidential election left voters with a stark choice in the run-off between far-right firebrand Jair Bolsonaro and leftist Fernando Haddad.

Bolsonaro, an ultraconservative former paratrooper, easily beat a dozen other candidates on Sunday — but not by enough to avoid an October 28 showdown with Haddad, the former mayor of Sao Paulo.

Bolsonaro won 46% of the vote to Haddad’s 29%, according to official results.

That tracked closely with pollster’s predictions, but Bolsonaro charged that “polling problems” had cheated him of outright victory in the first round, which required him to pass the 50% threshold.

Some of his supporters protested outside the national electoral tribunal in the capital Brasilia, chanting “Fraud!”

That anger reflected the uncertain outlook for the second round.

Surveys suggest Bolsonaro will have the edge, but that Haddad will draw nearly even with him after picking up substantial support from the defeated candidates.

“We expected to win in the first round,” one Bolsonaro voter, 77-year-old retiree Lourdes Azevedo, said bitterly in Rio de Janeiro.

Many voters also like his promises to tackle corruption and to cut climbing public debt through privatisations, as well as the devout Catholic’s family-first stance.

But poorer Brazilians, who benefited the most from the heyday during Lula’s time in office from 2003 to 2010, want a return to good times and hope Haddad can deliver.

The result is a very split electorate. Whoever ultimately wins the presidency in the world’s eighth largest economy will grapple with a large bloc of ideological hostility.

Despite sitting in congress for nearly three decades, Bolsonaro casts himself as a political outsider in the mold of America’s Donald Trump or the Philippines’ Rodrigo Duterte: tough-talking, brash, and promising a root-and-branch overhaul to an electorate weary of traditional parties spouting empty promises.